Crystal Memories
by BlackCatula
Summary: Short fic about Simon Petrikov and the fate of his frozen fianceé, Betty. Recommend watching the AT episode "Business Time" before reading.


Sometimes, against the laws of nature, icebergs make their way into warmer waters, where they cause all kinds of havoc for portbound ships and that one variety of easily-confused sharks. Sometimes they even float their way to the gritty sands of beaches, where the eccentric beach-combers flock and lay claim to them like an archaeologist to a pile of bones. It's a well-known fact that precious treasures may be hidden inside such icebergs, from forgotten relics to frozen fossils all the way up to fully-preserved life.

If being an all-business busybody can be called life, that is. That was the story they had told Finn the hero, that they were all business. Made of business, ran on business, and their crowning achievements and primary abilities were basically just business. After holding a brief power lunch strategy meeting, they had unanimously decided to elect Finn as their CEO for defrosting them from one such stray iceberg that had made its way to the shore. Being the 12-year-old CEO that he was, his orders were the simplest ones, those that helped keep his adventurous spirit in full swing, keeping his sword cleaned and sharpened, drawing enemy fire, and dealing with unwanted princess smooches.

But all that adventuring would inevitably lead him away from the beach, satisfied with the living treasures he'd already found. It was unfortunate that he harbored no greed though, for he had missed out on the prospect of acquiring MORE treasure. A far rarer and less expected treasure even than businessmen, though similar at face value.

No, he had missed out on meeting another relic of life. Another piece of the puzzle. Another link in the chain of an ever-deepening mystery from the past that would have proved vital to understanding things as they stood in the present. Finn had missed out on meeting a very special lady.

There was a story this lady had wanted to tell everyone. It hung on her lips, frozen beside her inside the iceberg, lost to the outside world and all those who might have appreciated it in light of other evidence they would later come to discover.

Her story told of someone dear to her who had recently and inexplicably fallen to addiction. Not the sort of addiction that involves lighting things on fire or giggling uncontrollably before later throwing it all back up into a toilet, but a strange, unearthly addiction to things invisible to the naked eye. Secrets unspoken. Mysticism. And, ironically enough, snow and ice.

She had wanted to tell the story of how her fiance had come into possession of a mystical crown whose bearer, once bonded to it, became maddeningly engrossed with the Power of Frost. The desire to spread the snow to all corners of the land. To thrive in it, understand it, and rule over the supernatural forces behind its whims.

She had wanted to tell the story of how he babbled on about the snow as though it were his own master. The way he spoke to her like she was merely a pawn in the game of his life. The way he said the power of frost might save her the way it was bound to save him. She had called him mad, a lunatic. She had shouted at him to stop acting crazy. When ice and snow billowed from his hands like a quite literal wizard, she had been terrified. He tried to tell her it would all be fine, that the snow would protect them both.

And he was right.

...to a degree.

He had been allowed to live forever, his own insides and mortality frozen forever beneath frosted skin. He lived even to this day, hundreds of years in the future, though he couldn't have told you how old he was, or what his name was, or where he even came from. He'd just tell you to stay out of his snack drawer and ask you if you knew any single princesses and wag his finger at his disobedient penguins.

And she herself had been allowed to live forever. That is, she would have, if the icebergs hadn't developed a mentality of their own and disappeared into the warmer waters. She would have lived forever, frozen in that strange running position, as though she'd been trying to escape. As though running from someone she no longer knew, only to, inevitably, be stopped when he asked her to stop.

It was the crown, she remembered him saying with tears in his eyes before the ice encased her completely. The crown had done it. The crown was the one who'd frozen her, not him. He had only wanted her to stop running and talk to him. To help him find his way back again. He was lost and scared, no more able to navigate his way back to sanity than an abandoned child could navigate her way to a bomb shelter in the middle of a war-torn city.

Her last conscious thought had been to tell the world the story of the crown that drove her fiance out of his mind. The crown that did not wish her to tell that very story. She would wait until the ice thawed, where someone would be waiting to revive her. Waiting to listen to her.

But she never did tell that story. The beach she'd washed up on belonged to a remote corner of the world, one not very commonly traversed. And certainly not one commonly traversed by someone who might help her out of the iceberg and nurse her back to health. The ice eventually melted in the blistering sun, but in the fragile moments between her body warming back to life and shutting down from lack of stored energy, she would not live to tell her tale. Her last breath faded to the wind, which carried the whisper "Simon...should you reach the afterlife...come and find me...".

Yes, if not for the businessmen, Finn might have had the chance to meet a charming lady full of secrets. But alas, Betty's story remains untold in the land of Ooo. And in a distant future timeline, an archaeologist would greedily lay claim to the bones of a young human, later theorized to have washed ashore hundreds of year ago in an ancient iceberg migration...

The secrets of the ice and snow run deep. And rarely do the elements share those secrets with anyone but a grim, select few individuals. Secrets we never knew were important. Secrets we never knew we wanted to know, forever frozen in crystal memories, lost to anyone but the King of the Ice himself. Not that any one memory or story holds any meaning to one who can't even remember how the story began... 


End file.
